Dear Tamalpais Union High School District Board,

In light of the recent acts of police brutality against Black communities, we want to use this time of reflection to analyze our school district’s role in perpetuating anti-Blackness. As a community, we need to use this opportunity to fight to be anti-racist and encourage a productive dialogue on race and equity within our education system and our student body.

School provides an essential role in shaping not only what our children learn, but more importantly, the analytical lens through which they view the world around them. As such, it has been drastically underutilized as a tool to combat racism. We believe high school provides an optimal period to introduce students to topics of anti-racism for several reasons. 

Firstly, completing high school represents a culmination of a student’s core educational studies— this core should educate students regarding how to be anti-racist both inside and outside the classroom. K-12 education focuses on teaching students about the most basic, fundamental components that are seen as integral to their academic pursuits, regardless of whether they choose to continue post-graduation studies. Math, science, history, and English are all considered “integral academic pursuits”, so our question is this: where does learning to be anti-racist fit in? It is undeniable that this country was built upon the foundations of slavery, followed closely by sharecropping, segregation, redlining, the War on Drugs, and now mass incarceration and police brutality. We live and experience our daily lives amidst this systemic racism. It shapes how we think about the world at an unconscious level from the very moment we are capable of speaking and interacting with others.

The impact of this in Marin is clearly seen through the experiences of Black and Brown students, documented on the Instagram accounts @bipoc.of.marin and @blackattam. Stories on the accounts include a Black student at Tam being referred to by a white substitute teacher as ‘thug life’, hateful graffiti left at both Redwood and Tam calling faculty the n-word, and students frequently using the n-word on social media and in the classroom. Others include BLM signs being ripped to shreds at Drake, and Black students regularly being called on to speak on behalf of the entire Black community. These instances of both blatant and microaggressive racist behavior fell on deaf ears when brought to the administration. Black students at Tam also wrote about counselors being surprised when they wanted to take higher-level courses and a white student who said to a Black student that “Donald Trump is gonna bring slavery back.” Another story, shared within the Black Student Union at Tam a few years ago, told of a white student joking with a Black student about police sirens heard in the distance “coming to arrest them”. One student wrote that Native American history, and race in general, were glossed over or left out entirely in their history classes, even when written into the curriculum. Many testimonies reveal that teacher-led discussions in Tam classes frequently assert that Black/Brown students from Marin City come from broken homes and poverty, do not have the same work ethic as white students, and live in the ‘ghetto’.

These experiences reflect the unchecked and often normalized racism that exists within our school system. They indicate that our current high school curriculum lacks sufficiently diverse perspectives and anti-racism material, an absence which has fostered a student culture of apathy towards racial issues and resulted in the development of ignorance among the student body. As stated by the National Council of Teachers of English’s Position Statement on IPOC in English and Language Arts Materials, such curricula also “deprives white students and teachers by denying them opportunities to gain a more complete and accurate picture of the diverse and intricately connected constellations of histories and literatures of the United States.” To create more inclusive, successful, and diverse classrooms, it is pertinent that we enact structural change. 

Additionally, high school is an optimal time to incorporate anti-racist narratives into the curriculum because it is students’ last mandatory schooling. Because not all students will choose to attend college after 12th grade, implementing anti-racist texts as a school requirement ensures that the majority of students passing through our school system will have some exposure to a diverse narrative in the classroom. 

Teachers must be trained to educate students about experiences that may differ from their own without being influenced by their own biases. By ensuring that racial equity is at the center of school instruction and curriculum, we can work toward dismantling racism within the classroom and creating more inclusive learning environments that do not perpetuate white-centered narratives and perspectives solely. Doing so will provide our students with the frameworks and knowledge they need to understand America’s specific racial context as it affects the present, which is crucial in ending the violent ignorance among the student body and creating a more welcoming culture to Black/Brown students.

 

Due to the reasons stated above, we propose that:

U.S. History, APUSH, and social issues classes spend at least a quarter of each semester teaching systemic racism, mass incarceration, prison labor, and police brutality, OR incorporate the Black American perspective into all time periods and topics studied. 

A minimum of at least 50% of significant texts in every English/Literature and Composition class be by a person of color AND about a person/people of color’s experience(s) with attention given to intersectionality of the authors chosen, including perspectives from female, male, and non-binary authors. At least one of the mandated books must be about Black experiences, due to anti-Blackness that has persisted since our nation’s inception. 

This position is supported by the National Council of Teachers of English’s Position Statement on Indigenous Peoples and People of Color (IPOC) in English and Language Arts Materials, which states that “efforts are consistently made in the classroom to encourage active use of materials which have more than a token representation of Indigenous and POC writers/critics.”

Teachers must have the autonomy to choose books from the recommended list provided OR if the selected text satisfies Education Code 60040.

The fiction books adopted as part of this curriculum be published, written, and set post-civil rights movement (~1960s) to ensure that race issues are taught with a contemporary, modern-day context in mind.

This implementation be enforced in all standard English courses taken to meet graduation requirements and alternatives for standard English classes, such as AP/AIM courses, at all TUHSD schools.

These works be analyzed to the same extent that any other traditional text would be interpreted in the classroom and studied with specific objectives in mind designed to examine race in the context of the novel AND in the students' lives. To meet this goal, the following must be mandated:
Ensure that the discussion of the materials outlined center around both literary value AND race.

Include core questions such as: In which ways is this book perpetuating racism? What can this book teach us? Why was it written? Can we identify current parallel issues/themes?

The National Council of Teachers of English’s Statement on Anti-Racism to Support Teaching and Learning asserted that “we must be active, both collectively and individually, in counteracting racism and other forms of bigotry in teaching materials, methods, and programs for the teaching and learning of English and the language arts.” This district must produce a written content standard that enforces productive and racially-sensitive class discussions around race as it relates to the course material and the students’ lives.

We urge that this school board take action by adopting such texts in line with the above proposal. These books can either be nonfiction or fiction and chosen with recommendations from teachers and input from the student body. A (non-comprehensive) recommended reading list we encourage teachers to choose from is linked here (bit.ly/DONBookList), but this list is subject to revision and adaptation. Furthermore, we have generated a list of books, films, and music exemplifying the Black experience listed here (https://bit.ly/2WiF7UN Some of these texts are readily available and accessible at no cost to students or teachers.

A voluntary task force at each Tamalpais Union District high school, composed of students, teachers, and administrators, be created to issue guidelines that ensure these texts are taught with proper information and background to ensure racial sensitivity. 
We recommend that this task force consists of a larger discussion-oriented council that reports to a smaller action-oriented council. The smaller council shall consist of one underclassman, one upperclassman, one teacher, and one non-teacher faculty member. The larger council shall consist of proportions of students, teachers, and administrators, which accurately represent the demographics of their grade level and the school as a whole. 

This group (the small and large council) shall be responsible for reviewing incidents of faculty, staff, and students reported for discriminatory or racist actions AND for following up on past complaints or events not given an adequate response AND recommending appropriate action. 

This task force shall be responsible for compiling a report at the end of each semester, which assesses the implementation of all guidelines included in this letter. This review shall be created from data received from anonymous surveys conducted among students and teachers and shall consist of syllabi, course materials, and a general anti-racism performance review. This review shall be published on the school’s website and made publicly available.

This task force shall meet four times per school year to review its equity report, collective feedback from its body, AND recommend changes.

A semester-long course on Black history and the Black experience be implemented into the curriculum as an upper-level English elective. Sample curricula designed by the Black Lives Matter organization are linked here.

Teacher training material be modified to include mandatory racial sensitivity and unconscious bias training. Sample training material produced by the Black Lives Matter organization is linked here.
This training shall incorporate practices for teaching white students about race without putting Black students on display or forcing them to speak as representatives for the entire Black community. 

This training shall also provide literature for teachers on anti-racist instruction. We recommend Letting Go of Literary Whiteness by Carlin Borsheim-Black and Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides, as well as this list of educator readings provided by the Black Lives Matter Organization.
 

Counselor training be implemented to promote anti-racism, specifically to hold white students and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) students to an equal and high standard. 

At least 20% of all future faculty hired each year be BIPOC.
To attract a larger BIPOC applicant pool, we suggest that this district directly recruits from programs that graduate large percentages of BIPOC teachers, such as HBCUs.

SOAR’s ‘Breakthrough Day’ be expanded to an event occurring once per semester, providing anti-racism and unconscious bias training to all students. 

As quoted from the Albemarle County Public Schools’ Anti-Racism policy, we suggest that “the Board...implement alternative discipline processes, such as restorative justice, to reduce racial disparities in discipline and suspension.
To ensure consistency in student discipline, each school shall collect and, at least annually, report data on all disciplinary actions. The data shall include the student’s race/ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, special education, and English Language Learner status, as well as a written explanation of the behavior leading to discipline and the specific corrective action taken.

When school administrators determine a student has committed a racist act, the student will be provided the opportunity to learn about the impact of their actions on others through such practices as restorative justice, mediation, role play or other explicit policies or training resources.”

Each Tamalpais Union District high school must examine the racial disparities that persist in its record of past disciplinary action and publish a written plan to establish how these disparities will be addressed. Evidence linked here shows a disciplinary system perpetuated by Tam, Drake, San Andreas, Redwood, and the TUHSD as a whole, that is disproportionately punitive towards Black and Brown students.

Lastly, we recommend that the Tamalpais High School Union District board create an internal task force to oversee the implementation of the above measures and advocate for anti-racist policy and curriculum within the board. 
We understand that as a school board, you have a specific protocol and budget for selecting new instructional materials in the classroom. While we recognize the amount of thoughtfulness and dedication this review process demands, we would like to request that this proposal, along with the books listed, be granted an expedited review process to enact tangible change both quickly and effectively. 

Schools are an instrumental tool in the journey towards dismantling racism in this country. To be silent on these issues is to dismiss the potential of this powerful institution to actively combat racism. We must enact permanent, structural change in our school system to contribute to this cause. Let us diversify our narrative and utilize our school system to combat oppression in this country and work towards a more equal, just world for all.